Category: Silent Key

  • News from Around the County

    What a wild week of weather! Just when we were thinking we would escape a cold and snowy winter we get the polar vortex slipping our way. Depending on where you live the snow and ice kept travel near impossible. Out here in East County we had temps in the low 20s and blowing snow causing drifts up to 3 feet high. Today the freezing rain has coated everything with almost an inch of ice. I love the snow but now I am looking forward to far less weather drama. Good old gentle Oregon rain with temps in the 40s and 50s sounds good to me now.

    Thanks to everyone who participated in the Sunday special Resource/Information net. We had 78 checkins and several emails from members who were out of town and unable to check in. It is great to practice how a net like this may evolve in the event of a major disaster.

    A special thanks to Dylan N7LYD who has taken the job as MCARES Training Manager as of January. Dylan has been leading the new member trainings and has been doing a great job.

    We are sorry to report that Echo Team member Jim Masog N7JFC is now a silent key. Jim had been fighting a long battle with cancer for the last several years. Jim lived less than a block from Gresham Fire Station 74 and it was his mission to take care of the ham radio equipment there. He knew all the fire fighters and was there for ARES exercises. He volunteered with the US Forest Service and he and his wife, Louise, spent many, many hours patrolling the forest service back roads. You might remember him as the guy with the old military jeep who always stopped by at our annual camp outs. We will miss him for sure!

  • Silent Key: John Bartlett KF7ZWX

    Electrical Father of the Trailer

    It’s with both joy and sadness that we remember John Bartlett, KF7ZWX, who passed on November 25th. From the first time he pulled up to a meeting with his antenna porcupine search and rescue truck, John made a huge impact on Multnomah County ARES over the 7 plus years of his membership. An electrician by trade, John was a man of many, many talents. He was an electronics engineer, a machinist, a programmer, and an educator. A carpenter, patent holder, father, a counselor, and a friend.

    Warm and generous of spirit, John was one of our best Elmers and was able to illuminate the complexities of radio and electronics with a quiet passion that was welcoming and infectious. His soldering classes were stuff of legend – who has eight soldering irons and all the accessories handy to set up at a moment’s notice? Two hours with John and you were soldering like you’d been at it for a decade. He could de-solder a feedline connector in seconds; it was like watching a magic trick.

    In one of his most incredible efforts for ARES, John put in hundreds of hours over months designing and installing – and personally donating much of – the entire electrical system for the ARES Communications Trailer. It’s an amazing, professional quality system that is simultaneously complex and simple, a truly inspired design that has been replicated in similar units up and down the west coast. It took an incredible amount of time and effort – John was one of the most generous men. Ever.

    On the Mike Team, he was an ocean of Zen in the middle of the chaos of a drill. The man was unflappable and always smiling, first to volunteer and last to leave, every time.

    We will miss him, and his dog, Puggles, deeply, and send our condolences and warmest thoughts to Katherine KQ7TBR and his family.